Lawmakers Hopeful For Future Of South Sudan

By Philip Bunnell

South Sudan officially gained independence on July 9, and despite its violent history and troubled future, lamakers on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee expressed hope for the world’s newest nation.

After 56 years of bloody civil war, the South Sudanese citizens overwhelmingly supported a referendum that opted for independence. Sen. Dick Lugar (R-Ind.), the top Republican on the committee, called South Sudan’s independence a “rare modern milestone.”

“The people of South Sudan have realized their dream of independence and deserve recognition for the sacrifice and commitment they have made to achieve this in the face of enormous odds.”

Despite the jubilance for South Sudan’s independence, there are obviously still grave concerns. US Special Envoy to Sudan Princeton Lyman warned the committee of “credible allegations of targeted and ethnic-based killings and gross human rights violations” that have taken place along the Sudan-South Sudan border. He also noted how “resupply routes for humanitarian agencies have been blocked.”

A litany of other problems linger, he added. For instance, some in the Sudanese government do not trust the United States and a serious lack of education and infrastructure will stunt development in the South.

Nonetheless, committee Chairman John Kerry (D-Mass.) remembered visiting South Sudan during the election where “millions of South Sudanese stood in line for hours to cast their votes for independence.”

“I remember coming out of one of the voting places and said ‘gosh, some of these people are going to walk away, the lines are so long and they can’t wait that long to vote,’” said Kerry.  Then, Kerry said, “two or three of these people… turned around to me and just said ‘Senator, we’ve been waiting for 56 years, we can wait a few more hours.’”

Lugar Pledges Consensus Despite Partisan Gridlock

By AJ Swartwood

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Sen. Dick Lugar (R-Ind.) said Wednesday that despite detrimental, bitter partisanship he still seeks a united front and bipartisan collaboration in the the committee. The Indiana Republican credited the impasse in the Senate concerning virtually all issues to the agenda President Obama pursued over the last two years.

“There has been [partisanship] throughout the last two years, largely because of agenda items selected by the President,” Lugar said, specifically pointing out the criticism the President was handed after announcing July 2011 as the day the country begin withdrawing troops from Afghanistan.

Lugar pledged to maintain unanimity in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and praised past chairmen, including Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Vice President Joe Biden, for working across party lines when handling foreign policy issues.

“If you get a unanimous vote out of the Foreign Relations Committee, the face of America to the rest of the world looks united, as opposed to a 9-7, or 10-8, or whatever it may be,” said Lugar.

Lugar said that the upcoming midterm elections may have enormous ramifications and could greatly impact the course of America’s foreign policy in the future.

We're Going to Have to Kill A Lot of Taliban, Says Expert

Philip Bunnell - Talk Radio News Service

Dr. David Kilcullen told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Tuesday that in order to reach the point of reconciliation with insurgents in Afghanistan “we’re going to have to kill a lot of Taliban to get them to negotiate.”

Kilcullen , non-resident senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, said bluntly that “when governments fight insurgents, they win 80% of the time, however, when governments fight insurgents in other countries, they are victorious 20% of the time.” 

Kilcullen said a government that is fighting insurgents at home has a political need to negotiate. Therefore, Kilcullen asserted that the United States will need to “negotiate from a position of strength,” and that the Taliban must believe that “they will have more to gain from talking to us than continuing to fight.”

Ryan Crocker, former ambassador to Iraq, agreed with Kilcullen saying that “reconciliation is only possible when insurgents are unsure if they are winning.”

Crocker also criticized the deadline for troop withdrawal in Afghanistan and the effects of publicizing will have on the attitudes of insurgents. While it is very complicated and nuanced, Crocker said he was concerned as to how the Taliban viewed the deadline, stating that they see it “as a date they need to hold out to, then they’ll be ok.”

Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.), Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, briefly touched on the 90,000 leaked documents regarding the war in Afghanistan from the public whistleblower website WikiLeaks.

“It’s important not to overhype or get excessively excited about the meaning of those documents,” said Kerry. “To those of us who have lived through the Pentagon Papers… there is no relationship whatsoever between that event and these documents.”

Petraeus, Eikenberry Testify Before Senate Foreign Relations Committee

By Ravi Bhatia - Talk Radio News Service

A day after U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Eikenberry joined General David H. Petraeus and Deputy Secretary of State Jacob Lew to discuss the civilian efforts in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The three testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and Committee, chaired by Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.).

Aside from reiterating U.S. Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s acknowledgment that U.S. efforts to stabilize Afghanistan and Pakistan would be difficult “but possible,” the three witnesses asserted that the United States would not abandon civilian efforts to stabilize the region, if and when U.S. troops remove the threat of al-Qaeda and the various Taliban networks in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

“Many Pakistanis believe that America will once again abandon the region,” Kerry said in his opening statements. “Let me be clear: It would be a mistake for anyone in Pakistan or elsewhere to believe that the President’s words about drawing down troops from Afghanistan mean an end to our involvement in the region.”

President Barack Obama committed 30,000 additional troops to the region, in response to McChrystal’s request for 40,000. Unlike the McChrystal hearings, war protestors were not present in the Dirksen building hallways during Eikenberry, Patraeus and Lew’s testimonies.

None of the three witnesses could confirm Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai’s estimation that the country would not be able to pay for its own security until 2024. Nor could they provide an estimate to the cost of training and deporting civilian troops to the region for another 15 years. However, Eikenberry said there will be almost 1,000 civilians from “numerous government departments and agencies on the ground in Afghanistan” by early 2010, tripling the total number of civilians from early 2009.

“The integration of civilian and military effort has greatly improved over the last year, a process that will deepen as additional troops arrive and our civilian effort expands,” he said.

Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), a member of the committee, suggested that the witnesses’ testimonies made him believe that after $13 billion dollars given to Afghanistan for development and infrastructure efforts, “we are basically starting from scratch as it relates to development efforts.”

“We hope that Karzai will do everything right,” he said. “But, you know, we may prod and poke but at the end of the day, this depends on an Afghan government that can ultimately sustain itself.

“At some point we need to get the price tag here,” Menendez continued.

Lew disagreed with Menendez’s notion.

“Before the development assistance that you're describing, there was virtually no access to health care in Afghanistan,” Lew said. “[Now] there’s very substantial access to health care, in the 80-percent range. There were virtually no girls in schools, there are a lot of girls enrolled in schools - more every day, every week, every month. It’s fair to say we have an awful lot of work ahead of us. [But] I don’t think it’s quite the same as starting from scratch.”

Afghanistan And Pakistan Stability Linked, Say Experts

By Meagan Wiseley - University of New Mexico, Talk Radio News Service

In a hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Thursday, expert witnesses agreed that the U.S. should neither abandon Afghanistan or substantially increase U.S. military forces in Afghanistan in regard to a stable Pakistan.

Maleeha Lodhi, a former Pakistani Ambassador to the U.S. said, “a precipitous withdrawal would repeat the strategic mistake of the 1990s when the U.S. abandoned Afghanistan to the chaos that nurtured al-Qaida. Nor should the West risk being trapped in a Vietnam style quagmire, a war without end and with no guarantee of success.”

Steve Coll, President of the New America Foundation proposed a strategy that falls between withdrawal and militarization.

“It would make clear that the Taliban will never be permitted to take power by force in Kabul or major cities. It would seek and enforce stability in Afghan population centers, emphasize politics over combat, urban stability over rural patrolling, Afghan solutions over Western ones and it would incorporate Pakistan more directly into creative and persistent diplomatic efforts to stabilize Afghanistan and the region”, said Coll.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Ranking Member Dick Lugar (R-Ind.) introduced the Enhanced Partnership with Pakistan Act, which Congress passed earlier this year, that will triple non-military assistance to Pakistan to $1.5 billion a year for the next five years.

Committee Chairman Kerry noted that “[U.S.] actions in Afghanistan will influence events in Pakistan and we must take that into account. But the ultimate choices about the country’s future will be made by the Pakistanis themselves.”